Adonis Jordan had every reason to expect he’d lead No. 1-ranked Kansas by Long Beach State on Monday night. The Jayhawks came in having won seven straight by an average of almost 26 points.
“We’d been playing well on the road, and we were coming home,” Jordan said. “I was thinking we should be able to blow them out here.”
Instead, Kansas was blown out, 64-49, in Allen Fieldhouse. The 15-point loss tied for the 10th-worst in Fieldhouse history.
Jordan, a senior, said he couldn’t have imagined the loss, just the third of his career at home “in my wildest dreams. Not here. Not in Allen Fieldhouse.”
The Jayhawks’ comfort might have been part of their undoing, he said.
“In the first half we just weren’t mentally ready to play and they got a big jump on us,” he said. “In the second half, we played good defense, but I missed a layup and we were missing two-footers. It felt like there was a lid on the basket. It was like, this must not be our night.”
Monday’s officials Norm Borucki, Jim Farmer and Al Hackney were assigned by the Big West Conference. Three Big Eight officials worked last year’s KU-LBSU game in Long Beach.
Lucious Harris, who scored 24 points, became LBSU’s all-time leading scorer. A high school teammate of Adonis Jordan at Cleveland High in Reseda, Calif., Harris has 1,975 points.
KU, which hit just 42.3 percent, shot under 50 percent for only the second time this season. KU hit 46.7 percent in an 86-74 loss to Michigan at the Rainbow Classic in Honolulu.
KU, 0-for-9 from past the three-point arc, broke a string of 18 consecutive games with at least one three-pointer.
KU’s 14-game homecourt win streak was snapped. Louisville defeated KU, 85-78, last year in Allen Fieldhouse.
The last time KU trailed any team by as many as 21 points was March 10, 1990, in a 95-74 loss to Oklahoma in the semifinals of the Big Eight tournament.
The 49 points were KU’s lowest in Allen Fieldhouse since a 42-41 loss to Missouri in 1982. The Jayhawks’ output was their lowest anywhere since a 49-point outing against Wichita State in 1987. KU lost that game, 54-49, in Wichita.
Long Beach State forward Mike Atkinson dumped the team’s water jug over coach Seth Greenberg in the 49ers’ jubilant locker room after the game.
According to a KU official, a power problem prevented the scoreboard from displaying players’ points and fouls during the first half. The glitch was repaired at halftime.
During the last time out, a fan sitting behind the auxiliary scoreboard in the northwest corner of the fieldhouse switched the JAYHAWKS and GUEST signs above the scores. The fan was ejected.
